World
Coronavirus Could Mean the End of Borderless EU Travel
- Austria already enacted measures to block travelers from Italy
- Swiss closed small crossings to focus on major checkpoints
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Passport-free movement is arguably the most successful feature of daily life for more than 400 million people in the European Union. But now the coronavirus poses an existential threat to a right that so many have taken for granted for decades.
The ability to travel across the bloc without border checks or passports was enshrined in the 1990 Schengen agreement and became a reality in 1995. Ireland and the U.K., which has since quit the EU, arranged an opt-out back in 1999. Four other EU member states (Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia and Cyprus) are outside Schengen while Switzerland joined the borderless area in 2009.